Clinical evaluation of patients in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) often relies heavily on diagnostic images, such as portable chest radiographic images, for example. It has been noted that chest radiographs can be particularly helpful in the ICU for indicating significant or unexpected conditions requiring changes in patient management. To meet the need for readily accessible and rapid diagnostic imaging, equipment such as portable chest radiography equipment has been developed, allowing the ICU clinician to conveniently obtain a radiographic image as needed for the patient.
One concern for effective patient treatment relates to the ability to detect the proper positioning of the tip of a tube that has been inserted into the patient. Possible tube types include, for example, endo-tracheal (ET) tubes, feeding (FT) tubes, and nasogastric (NT) tubes. Proper tip positioning can help to insure delivery or disposal of liquids and gases to and from the patient during a treatment procedure. Improper tip positioning can cause patient discomfort, render a treatment ineffective, or even be life-threatening. Other types of medical devices that are inserted into the body also require proper positioning, such as pacemakers, balloon catheters and stents.
Techniques for computer-assisted tube tip detection have proved to be error-prone, making mal-positioning difficult to detect in some cases. Even though tubing, wires, and other apparatus used to support the patient appear in a radiographic image, little or no attention has been paid to using automated image analysis techniques to detect tube tip position. Image processing techniques have thus far been directed more to eliminating unwanted effects of tube and tip structure detected in the obtained image than to the task of determining the position of the tip itself. There is, then, a need for a diagnostic imaging method for detecting and identifying tube tip positioning.